ABDC Operations AO/Operations Business Analyst

We are seeking a San Antonio, TX based Business Analyst to join our AllianceBernstein Defined Benefit and Contribution ABDC Operations Team.

OPS Group Description:

The ABDC Operations department is responsible for all transfer agency related services for our Collective Investment Trust (CIT), Defined Contribution Products: Custom Retirement Strategies (CRS), Lifetime Income Strategy (LIS) and Multi Asset Strategy and Wealth Strategies products. This includes but is not limited to processing and quality control verifications on all daily trading activity, reconciling client holdings and producing daily trade confirmations. Other duties include monthly fee assessment, production and distribution of client level reports, procedural documentation, and implementation, responding to client requests, problem research and resolution.

Describe the role:

We are seeking a San Antonio based Project Business Analyst to support the business needs in our Defined Benefit/Contribution team. The successful candidate will work closely with colleagues in San Antonio New York, Nashville, London, & Taiwan.

• Understands the business problems / needs from business executives, product managers, operations managers and business users.

• Analyses and documents detailed business requirements including data and non-functional requirements.

• Produces test cases and assists Quality Assurance team in testing developed code prior to User Acceptance Testing.

• Communicates business requirements to development staff and coordinates the project implementation effort.

• Uses a combination of SQL, ACCESS, Excel, and other general IT skills to assess problems and design solutions.

• Ensures traceability between business and functional requirements.

• Conducts gap analysis and downstream impact exercises for system changes.

• Develops and maintains a detailed understanding of business processes and applications, customer needs and priorities.

• Makes suggestions on business process improvements to promote business growth and efficiency.

• Builds and maintains relationships with key business, IT stakeholders, team members, vendors, and other departments involved in the projects, and manages expectations.

• Promotes a constructive, positive team environment and maintains a spirit of openness, information sharing, inquisitiveness, problem-solving, and support for our common goals.

• Working with Systems Support teams to resolve user issues

• Understanding of Project Management Principals

Key Responsibilities Include

• Gathering requirements for new project implementation

• Ability to analyze existing systems along with peers and put together requirements for new features or enhancements

• Build knowledge of business requirements, data models, user interfaces and navigation specifications that bridge business need with systems design/deliverables.

Functional Responsibilities Include

• Independent interaction with business users and IT groups to understand requirements

• Collaboration with onshore/offshore developers

What makes this role unique and interesting?

The opportunity to grow and develop within a small team setting. The role involves gathering requirements from the Business, IT and Product teams to develop solutions to enhance and improve the applications we currently support.

What is the professional development value of this role, i.e. what learning and professional growth does the role offer the candidate?

A person in this role will gain knowledge in various aspects of transfer agent functions ranging from client servicing, transaction processing, financial reporting and money flow resulting from transactional activity. This improves the business skills of otherwise technically solid analyst. This position gives the candidate a unique opportunity to interact across IT and business groups, while building the skills needed to support AB business.

Job Qualifications (The ideal candidate should have the following):

Technical Skills:

• Knowledge of Defined Contributions, Fund of Fund, and Collective Investment Trust

• Strong data analytical and problem-solving skills

• Knowledge of data, reporting and analytic functions preferably within a financial firm

• Experience with Structured Query Language (SQL) - needs the ability to query data.

• Knowledge of relational databases and concepts

• Ability to understand and interpret complex data relationships and queries.

• Able to actively participate in data design/modelling discussions.

• Knowledgeable in using Jira, and SharePoint a plus

• MS Office

• Word - Basic knowledge is sufficient.

• Excel - Used frequently. Basic knowledge and experience required. Strong knowledge and working experience advantageous. Ability to write VBA macros to aid data analysis

• PowerPoint - Used quite often. Working experience advantageous.

• Visio - Used quite often. Experience advantageous. Also, an aptitude for converting hand-drawn diagrams into clear electronic versions.

• Access - Experience not required although working understanding of databases potentially useful as role develops.

• General Project Management

Business Skills:

• Corporate Actions

• Understanding of Securities industry and financial instruments are desirable

• Fund Accounting

• Recon

• Portfolio Management

• Project Management

• Ability to understand algorithms for advanced calculations

Special Knowledge:

Knowledge of mutual funds, financial or business operations including: banking, securities, SQL and Excel

Location: City/State/Country: San Antonio/TX/USA

San Antonio, Texas